So I'm confused on how claiming pve islands works. They're pretty much never claimable unless they're in the polar regions. When my company claimed an island on NA PVE, there was another company that contested our claim.. We eventually left said island because well yetis are mean and a lot of the polar islands are kind of blah. We're living in lawless right now but i'm curious how those people were able to contest our claim?
If people have 200k gold in their flag do they just keep that island for weeks even if they don't log in?
Is there any way to contest territory in pve?

So I made a suggestion post about two solutions to this problem, that taking a claim is next to impossible if the previous owner just keeps visiting the island to refresh the timer on his precious piller spam.
Two main ideas come to mind here.
1. Put company limit on structures and make single structures decay in 8 hours.
2. Make it so that when a new company takes an island, they also take all of the structure and spam on the island, so that they are free to use it, or demo it for resources.
What does anyone else think is the better option? Or propose your own option either way.

Currently spam is becoming a problem for claims in pvp, and I'm sure in pve as well. There are two good simple solutions you could go with here.
1. Company limit on structures, and freestanding structures not attached to anything decay in 8 hrs. That combination could keep structure spam under control, and make battles on the spammed islands much less laggy.
2. OR you could change it so that when an island is taken over so are all the structures placed on it, that way the island owner gets the ability to demolish it all, or use it as their own base, they could clear off spam if they wanted. Gives more reason in pvp to actually take someones claim, rather than just raid and leave it all raided.
One of these changes or something needs to be changed, because with the current system, all islands will eventually be unusable, except for by the original spammer.
Thanks for reading & Keep making an awesome game please!

It seems like you all put a lot of thought into PVP and then forgot about PVE until the last moment.
I urge you (developers) to reconsider your decision to remove claims from PVE.
Doing this will destroy your plans for trade and player markets in the future as everyone will have access to everything. Or nothing as most spawns will be blocked by foundation and pillar spamming.
Player will log in to find their ships enclosed in walls. Resources will be built over by careless players and trolls.
This decision doesn't resolve anything and adds even more issues.

Sometime earlier today we were able to see the claim "timer" in top right.
Now it does not show an expire timer, wich makes it pretty hard to figure when to be ready to contest a flag.
Before:
https://ibb.co/3Mshv3y
The change:
https://ibb.co/qFYMzxW

(1) Abusive Ownership.
(a) kicks me off property in favor of a friend
(b) kicks me off property because I won't farm for him, tame for him, breed for him, etc. After all, he gets to set those rules.
(c) destroys or takes anything of mine he wants, punitively or just because he wants it
(2) Sets limits on my building or docking of ships. But think about this - there is no infinite space so there must be some kind of limits, but this is ripe for favoritism too. I know I wouldn't want to be the landlord. It's a painful and thankless job.
(3) Would not give me the opportunity to let allies build near me, which I could do if I had my own land.
In my view, there is too much hassle and griefing potential even on PvE to make this iteration of the Claiming system satisfactory for the majority. I'd vote for our friendly devs to go back to the drawing board on this one.
What about you guys? Anything else in the claiming system that would break the game for you?

i have beds on A9 in official PVE server and on A10. But so far have not been able to claim land.
How do you claim an island for a company?
Am I in the wrong area to make a claim? I've tried in both freeport and lawless areas.
Is it possible to claim land in PVE? What grids are claimable?
Thanks!

The system sucks. It's currently impossible to capture a ship unless it's abandoned. Selling captured ships was the main source of income for pirates. The piracy tree end tier skill sucks too. One minute off the capture timer with a ninety second cool down. The whole system needs to be replaced.
Alternate system one:
Each deck of a ship has a capture zone that must be held for X time. You can capture them in any order, but must hold all of them at once for Y time to claim the ship. The zones can be re-captured by the ship owners.
Alternate system two:
All enemy NPC's and players must be off the ship. Claim flag like the current system, but much shorter timer (30 minutes or less). You must remain on the ship to capture. Enemies stop countdown, but do not revert it until all claimants are off the ship. Anchored ships have an additional separate claim requirement that ends in a minigame to break the anchor before the main claiming process can begin.

@Jatheish
(At first: sorry for my bad english, i am just a woman from germany, trying my best to write down my opinions in english)
I see what the online player count is dropping down. I talked with a lot of people in different ark/atlas communitys about - why they dont log in.
And i tryed to find some solutions for bigger problems. So just some brainstorming ideas.
Let the players create a usefull city, a trading routes, habours and so on
Bank System:
Let the people up- and download gold to the own account, let them use every tribe-bank or ally bank for this. Taverne Food selling.
Lets craft every tribe NPCs whos is only able to sell food, so a tavern makes sence. And buff the cooked food to something its worth shipping resources from around the world... and don´t down them to a 5-stack.
Habour and growing citys
Everyone can build a nice habour but for what?
Look who is the bigges tribe or wich tribe hast the most landclaims in a sector. So THIS tribe, is able to place NPC Vendors or Auction buildings.
If a tribe is able to create a player-friendly habour ... it will start to become a big trading habour /center.
If there is enaugh space to land /anchor with ur ships, if u finde a lot of trade stuff and maby u will finde some land to rent from the tribes, for a small outpost, storage... something great can grow. Crafting a nice habour and make ships anchor. Give us a component for a quay wall, where ships can anchor. It is a pain in the ass to build a harbor and at the end the ships can not anchor. Dont let us waste tonns of struktures in the deep water to get the ships anchored.
Landclaims (Idea is just for PVE. i dont know enaugh about PVP Server to make a suggestion there)
U need a better system. Its not ok to run all the time to save ur claim (PvE) but also just loging in all 3 Weeks to make ur land save, its also not ok for the rest.
So make some stats to check, how aktiv a tribe is/was last 24 hours / last week. Check up how many ingame hours a tribe has last 24 hours, last week.
Check how many ships moving hours they have, how many ships released, how many tames got used and so on.
Dont tell us exaktly wich faktors are how importent, so people dont find to much easy ways to use the mechanic in a wrong way.
If u know how aktiv a tribe is and how many players are aktiv in real.... use that informations to manage how many flags they need = can hold easy and drop down the save-time for the flags.
Use something like online hours or tribe aktivity points.
Maby a tribe can have 1 Tribe Flag wich is save for 2 Weeks. Then set up more flags (save time 7 days) per 8 hours playtime/aktivity ... no mather 4 persons play 2 hours a day or one play 8 hours a day.
If the tribe has 48 hours playtime / day - they have 6 more flags with 7 days savetimer.
If they drop down the playtime to 24 hours / day ... drop down the savetime of each flag (not the one main tribe flag) to 3,5 days savetime... so they need to be more aktive or remove some flags to have more savetime.
Land for rent
Lets talk about why rent land/space to other players.
If an enemy try to claim ur land. The tenant get an information also. The tenant has a kind of right to claim the land as first.
He can take over the land before the enemy gets it. Maby let it cost an amount of 1000 Gold. (First renter on the flag, has the first right)
Give this renter a chance to say "save the claim for the owner" - so flag stay save, without beeing claimed and for no money.
Old ships standig around for weeks , blocking ur habour.
If a Ships isnt moved for 3 days - let player klick on it to say "remove ur shit". The owner tribe get an information in a new log (tribe log is to full to find this info) , or mark it in an other color on the map).
The owner tribe has 3 more days now, to just move it 1 meter (or just anchor it again) to show... its not and un-loved ghost ship, its in use.
If they pass the 3 day timer... lets decay it between 1-3 more days, depents on how big the ship is.
Let the people removed compleatly.
If a player dont logged in for 4 Weeks. Remove them from the server. Compleatly... also from tribes and so on - clear that shit. Look into their stuf, so the tribe dont have bad penalitys cause of that.
Ships - personal owner.
Give the option "personal owner" to ships. Let the Ship Creater choose, its an tribe ship or an personal owner ship.
And as an personal owner, u can unclain a ship, so everyone else can claim it and can choose claim as personal owner or as tribe.
So we can build and SELL ships!
TRADE SYSTEM!
We realy need something like a trade window for an save share. Without taxes, or something like an auktions house. Just to say "take this and give me that", without the need to drop stuff on the ground.
If i wanna sell a ship: I need something like a ownership notice, put it into a trade window and if the buyer put the right amount into the window, everyone can klick "ok", so we have a save deal.
Same like resources. Use a selling box, put in the stuff u wanna sell and close it (say ready) ... buyer put his payment into the other side of the box and say ready, and if both klick a last "ok", the deal is done.
Breeding
48 hours is a way to much. Temperatur... its to heavy to manage the breed, the babys dying to fast cause of the normal changes of the temperatur and u cant do anything against the warm/hot.
Having 20 pinguins and 30 fires and looking into it for 15 - 48 hours - that cant be the right way.
Sorry, but our tribe needs to work in real live. We can do it as a tribe, of cause - but if everyone needs to sleep or work... there is nobody who can manage it ... so we need some people without a work to be able to breed?
In Ark i loved to be a breeder, but in atlas, its not possible if u have a real life.
Ship Autopilot.
I can put an npc on a ship weel and use the auto pilot. But why the hell it stop working, so far i leave the ship - so its useless?
Of cause i know, it will just drive forward... yes i know, it will drive into an isle , will do nothing agains ghost ships (ok, i can set the npc on auto fire with cannons!) and will be a blind pilot.
But if there is an autopilot - lt me use that! I wanna set it on drive strait forward and i can jump onto the bed on board if i think the npc need help. (i can see my ship on the map).
If i loose the ship... its happed... let it be MY risc.
There are a lot more ideas, but i am not sure if any one importend will read and think about it - and i dont wanna waste my time

I believe that they can’t fix overlapping issue with flags when you have a lot flags. This is a reason why they add one flag per island. So we have two option.
Option 1. No flags at all and everyone can build everywhere. Which is not ideal.
Option 2. Have one flag per island. So now we need to help them shape system how one flag per island would work.
Please post ideas how you would like to improve one flag per island system. Please discuss topic realated question.
Many thanks

With the news of resuse of the PVP claim system for PVE, which i heavyly disagree with (alliance gone for this--- sure), i try approach an implementable land system.
Here a list of what I THINK should be the criteria:
What it should do:
*heavyly increase effort to grief (spam entities), preventing is a dream
*make isand available for everyone (no, MMO does not mean u have to play in big companies)
*improve server performance for everyone (make big buildings costy)
*no taxes
*make sure that buildings, if they can be build, are not demolishable form the start
*have a mechanism to save smal buildings for a span of 3 weeks as of patch 20.1 (not any size of tho)
What it not have to do:
*prevent resource block or protection of resources (this can be done by player interaction)
*reserve big future fortification space (this can be planned in advance)
*promote PVP mentality in PVE (you just dont dominate in PVE, go PVP or quit)
*force a playstyle to other people (ok every system does tbh)
What I like to be implemented in the next update (wipe):
I dont think the devs can come up with another system (time and resource constrains) for PVE then the lawless model from blog22 or a PVP-loan like from blog 23. So with what we can work with , my dream system is lawless with Rust like upkeep.
*no landlords / claims at all
*building prevention from buildings are larger then current lawless, but smaller then current other islands.
*everyone can build everywhere (except near other foundations)
*automatically upkeep from auto-repair structure
*no auto-repair structure attached to a structure (not a radius) means it decays really fast (like 4-8h, repairable per pinwheel, hammer tho)
*the more connected building parts the higher the upkeep per part (whole building cost/h increase exponentially with building size)
*only two (maybe even one) auto-repair structure per company per island.
*upkeep same for each tier of building (u may not be skilled in stone building, but u can farm every resource)
*upkeep for gates really high
For supporter of the blog 23 system, what do you think it achieve, make better then blog 22?
~~~ Kummba

Just make it 1 per company in PVE but keep it. It's also a way to control who lives next to you and avoid greifers. Some big company only greif small. I see some already placing tcth foundations everywhere to prevent resources spawn and kill our game and they will have the mean to auto repair them.

The issue with server lag and land claims has a lot to do with an over abundance of abandoned Rafts, Sloops, and Skooners. This issue effects most claimed lands, Power stone Islands, and Lawless islands. Rafts are the worst with this because of the amount of health they have and the slowness of decay. It can take up to 1.5 months for a Raft to sink. This is causing a lot of land in the lawless regions to not be buildable, and inaccessible to anchor. Rafts, Sloops, and Skooners are still clogging up power stone islands and causing disconnects and server lag. And this is also being used to grieve other players by blockading companies into their own land and not being able to sail or access their ship yards.
I have addressed this issue before in my post on how to balance the claim flag system here.
Here is the lines that pertain to this issue.
As you can see this will address these issues and also help with server lag and clutter.

First of all I want to thank you for addressing what I would consider to be the biggest issue plaguing Atlas at the moment, the claim system.
For those that missed the latest Captain's Log.
I was lucky enough the claim a spot in the first week, so i am not coming to this as a player that is speaking purely out of frustration. I am concerned with the overall health of a game and it's systems. This game has big potential and I would like to see it grow in stead of shrink over the coming months.
The problem currently is that not only is everything is taken (and has been taking since day 2), but it is all locked by players that have far more claims than they will even use. Over half of my island is claimed by companies/players that are playing on entirely different servers. There is massive amounts of land in this game right now that is locked and unavailable because people have 30, 50, 100 or more claims that will will never be able to use. It's not only big companies that are doing this (although they are probably the main cause) but individuals and smaller companies as well. Go to any polar region and see entire islands completely empty, claimed mostly by 1 person or company.
This causes frustration among new players and old players alike. This causes servers to feel dead with little or no community and forces people to lawless areas just to be able to build and explore.
So what's the solution? From day one the obvious solution that almost everyone was suggesting was limit the number of claims. If this was implemented the first week people would have been able to take it in stride a bit better. Yes, there would have been backlash from people that got off starter areas first and blanket claimed islands but the long-term benefit would have probably been worth the short-term backlash.
I hope you (the dev's) have a miracle fix up your sleeves to solve the claim issue, I would be all ears to hear it but I just can't see a solution that doesn't involve some reasonable limit on number of claims. I hope that is in the works for the new system. The perception right now is that every "solution" has worsened the problem and added new issues. I don't think a server wipe is feasible at this point but, if you were to start new servers with a claim limit my guess is that the vast majority of your player base would happily make the move over to start fresh.
What would be a reasonable claim limit? 3-5 claims per person would allow you to have multiple bases in different regions and do basically everything you need to do. Larger companies with more players would have more claimed area, smaller companies would still have a comfortable amount of space. You could even tie it to discovery points, starting with 1-2 available claims and grow over time as you reach your max 5 claims with say 200-300 DPs. The DP system could also be expanded to include taming, breeding, killing rares, collecting rare resources, etc. It's a cool system that has room to grow imo.
The Ladder system for claims just incentivizes this problem. A ladder systems is fine for other things like discovery points or maybe structures destroyed in PVP (as long as offline raiding is addressed).
As is stands the claim systems latest change addressed those people that wanted the peace of mind that their claims would still be there after a hypothetical three week vacation. The vocal minority is loud but rarely think about pros and cons. Generally just emotional reactions to their specific problems.
The biggest mistake a game company can make is NOT listening to their player base.
The second biggest problem IS listening to the player base.
I feel for the dev's and hope there is a good solution out there that everyone can agree at least helps move into the right direction.

I ran into this, it seems that the ocean floor actually counts as where the ground starts. So, even if you would like to build a base out on the ocean, it is impossible.
It says "Too high above ground, cannot place" when trying to place a ceiling or stair above water in deep ocean
Is there any way around this? I find it hard to believe that sea claims can only be built on underwater..... if so, then what are they even for?

Ahoy!
This is my First post here and maybe the last, i play since launch day, y log every day at night and play 1 or 2 hours.
There is a bug that is affected me on NA PVE server. Every time a new patch with change in the claim timer or something is deployed to the servers my claim time reset to zero or something and someone steal my claim in no time. With the last change from 3 day to 20 days i logout, go to sleep, download the patch and log in (maybe 12 or 14 hours?), when i log i was trapped in my own house and the territory claimed.
The rest of the story is already known, cant get back my claim, my stuff, my chest, weapons, etc. After a long time of chat the other company try to give me back the zone, but is imposible because of claim overlaps and closeness.
With the previos patch i have to search a new land for days or weeks...
Anyone experiment this bug? any solution? im very frustrated with this =(, i know is a "pirate game" but if i lose the claim with a bug its no the same if i lose it fighting in pvp or something related to game mechanic.
thanks for reading!
Cya

This 18.12 patch is gonna kill my company if I don't get some more people recruited asap. I have a lot of people who work during the week and play on weekends as well as take business trips, etc..there's only a handful of us that played this game this far through even though we started off bigger and we have a 4 day timer with only a couple places claimed. Not sure how this is going to affect others but if you're in the same boat we should team up cuz I don't got no time for this lol.

Thats me pointing at this claim change on PVE ...... 1st you screw everyone over with sleepers dont protect while you could have just "killed" off the guys that have been afk for ages instead , now you have this "protection" timer that even with 58 claims has a 11 day protection. You want new players or what ?!? im guessing you are just releasing updates just so you guys could stop funding the servers and close them now. Oh and ive been playing since 2hr after the game released and 250 hr now , so far had 4 fresh starts. Not mad about that , but when they keep releasing updates so every time you have to start again its harder and harder to get any land , you are reaching to the point where this game is not worth the grind. You have too many bugs in the game where you might have to start again or someone just uses some exploit to take over everything you owned. And then you just keep releasing updates that make claiming even harder , if you want your servers to turn into ghost towns sure go ahead just keep doing the same shi* , not like they are reaching that state already with about 5-10 players on avg per server if you exclude lawless zones. Anyways my rant is over and its time to uninstall might be back but il prolly forget all about this game in couple of days... Oh and this will prolly be removed thanks to the Title but have to give credit where credit's due.

My clan just informed me that my house was lost and the territory claimed from under me. I understand not letting sleeping bodies block claims but I was on Wednesday. I tried to steal territory. I LOGGED OFF inside my home. TWO DAYS AGO. Now, all my hardwork is gone. Some other clan took it from my sleeping body. I THOUGHT flags were supposed to renew when you entered their radius. I THOUGHT it was supposed to take THREE DAYS for someone to be able to steal your land after they renew. Maybe, you should just make EACH FLAG HAVE A COUNT DOWN TO WHEN IT CAN BE STOLEN. Or maybe you should be more clear about how flag renewal works. This is such utter ridiculousness. Also, did I read the patchnotes correctly? You can have NPCs guard your claims? This entire claim system has been bugged one way or another from day one and I'm really trying hard to find the will to want to play. OH WAIT, I CAN'T UNLESS I KILL MYSELF BECAUSE I'M LOCKED IN MY OWN HOME.

Okay i will go at the biggest issue now and try to suggest a rework of the claiming system that will allow all players and potential players to enjoy the game.
It is clear that in a game that has everything from single players, small companies to big mega corps and giant territories as well as pvp, pve, trading, fighting, land and sea claims ...
One claim flag and mechanic will not do, there needs to be several mechanics and flags to make all this work. Player Flags: Home Base (Limit 1)
- Every Player can place one Home Base that will claim a small territory like 15 meters just enough to build a house. The Home Base cannot be unclaimed by any means, you can place a new one thou that will delete the old one but once placed you will have a reuse timer of several days that prevents you from rapidly moving the flag. On pvp of course the buildings on the claim can be attacked and destroyed, the claim will remain thou but getting your buildings destroyed over and over will make you want to move the claim somewhere else. The small area also allows to use the blank spaces between bigger claims that are not useable yet. It will decay after not logging in for 8 weeks. Home Port (Limit 1) (Sea Claim)
- Every Player can place one Home Port that will claim a small area just enough to build one shipyard. The Home port cannot be unclaimed by any means, the same regulations as the Home Flag do apply. On PVP structures can be destroyed on the Home Port. It will decay after not logging in for 4 weeks.
Players will not have any other claims to place. Every other claim will be only for companies as following.
Company Flags: Company Base (Limit 1)
- Every company can place one Company Base that has the actual claim size. It will have some protection from unclaiming and serves as the company base that is hard to take over.
- PVE The claim cannot be unclaimed when members where active on the claim within 2 weeks.
- PVP The claim cannot be unclaimed with members active or sleeping on the claim. Once the claim gets unclaimed it will count as occupied and can be instantly reclaimed by the original owners when all enemies on the claim are defeated, the buildings on a occupied claim will remain with the original owner. After 48h the claim will turn into a normal claim of the new owner.
- New Owner: If the attacking company has no own City claim the claim will turn into a city claim and all buildings will change owner. If they have their own city claim already it will change into a normal claim and the building will stay with the original owner and start to decay, giving them more time to claim their company base back and preventing complete take over of multiple company bases.
- This claim should be difficult to take over as it is the main base of a company and a battle about this claim will last a long time to give the owners and even small companies the chance to fight back.
- This claim will not decay by itself. Company Harbour (Limit 1) (Sea Claim)
- Every company can place one Company Harbor. It works exactly like the Company Base only that it can be placed in the water to make a Harbor. Land Claim (Unlimited)
- The normal Land claim. It is unlimited but has no protection other than the strength of the Company that owns the claim. It can be unclaimed within 10 minutes and allows for building settings to allow other to build like the current claim system does but you cannot take taxes on this land. As the settings can be changed at any time this land is considered private land. The claim will decay within 24h if there is no building on the claim.
Upon taking the claim over it will turn into a occupied claim for 24h during this time buildings will remain with the original owner and cannot be demolished but you can build and not loose the claim from leaving the territory. Empire Claim (Unlimited)
- The empire claim is like the Land claim but will always allow others to build and takes taxes, it is considered public land and the owner cannot demolish buildings. On the other side this claim gets more protection and cannot be unclaimed fast. It does require to be contested for 24h. Since you can build and live there it is more easy to contest it for a longer time and allow the owner to strike back. The claim will decay within 24h if there is no building on the claim. So even if you get a new lord and they might raise taxes they cannot kick players out of their homes by simply changing it to private land. Sea Claim (Unlimited)
- The Sea claim works like the land claim but can no longer be placed on the open seas as it will decay within 24h if there is no building placed on the claim so it is more tailored to shores and shipyards or harbors. Deep Sea Claim (Unlimited)
- Should there be stuff on the open seas that needs claiming the claim flags will be placed on the sea bed and not be shown on the surface, so you are not in some ones territory while sailing the open seas. Occupied Claim (Temporary)
- Its purpose is so you can claim Territory fast and dont need to stay inside but prevent you from demolishing the buildings of the original owner and give them a chance to strike back. The buildings stay with the original owner and it will turn into your claim after a certain time.
Claim messages
You will receive messages about contested or decaying claims with coordinates to be aware of claims you are going to loose and strike back. Also you will see player and company names of contesters in the message so you could also choose to strike at their base instead and convince them to leave your claims alone.
The numbers on protection and claim times are up for balance and not set in stone. It needs to be tested first.
This should allow all players to enjoy the game better, help with the problem of claiming beeing boring and no real chances to actually fight over a claim in most chases as well as giving some protection and freeing up space to allow more players to stay in the game.

Am I the only one who is close to have had enough of the sea claim barrels and all the flag notifications where either the owner or some random person wants to tell us something completely irrelevant? The entire map is close to being red if not already. it´s bad enough on land, but at least there is something valid about it. On sea however it´s barrel after barrel, usually with 3-5 barrels in sight always.
I get it, sea claim and specially for the feb update is going to pay back in the bank. We are landlords(And sealords) ourselves, never harvest. Just let all the others do the work because we just got lucky. Born with a silver spoon (thank god for the unlimited resource box). However it is just getting stupid. All the 5000 flags per server with all it´s random player made flags that the client has to load each time it passes can´t be good either. Shoot a SOD? We take a cut, harvest from the seabed? We take a cut, found some floatsam? We take a cut. That part I like, but let´s be honest. At a time a patch note said it would remove sea claims and there was much rejoicing. Only to see the patch notes being changed again so they stayed. Feb patch will add teal colour to allies. But for the rest of the map your X is forever gone.
So despite how I hate it in my bank account. Can we please once and for all get rid of the sea claims and every single flag notification.
Not that either the claim system or lawless system even work to begin with...

I realy not understand how it works.
What i understand:
You can't steal the land when somebody sleep on it(not more than 3 days(real time))
You can't steal the land when company member was on this land less than 3 days ago
I suppose that you can steal it, when other company goes in afk, on my island i have many company where upkeep time near than -37k or eve -90k seconds.
Pls explain me, what happened after upkeep timer goes away?
And how devs suppose to punish afk company's, and what i need to do for claim enemy land, which have -60k upkeep timer.
And also - if they sleep on their land how i must claim it? Even if it allow me to claim? I understand how it works on PVP, but on PVE?